New books by friends, part 1: BOOKLIFE & me

Since flying from Siem Reap to Bangkok to Tokyo to D. C. to Albany, I have been roiled and clubbed and generally dragged in and out of sleep by raging jet lag. Twelve time zones appears to be too much for this body. Meanwhile the floor guys came and tore up multiple rotting floors in my 1808 house--antique larch and old-fashioned linseed-oil style linoleum going in--and computer and printer and camera and so on are lost in tottering towers in the dining room. Therefore I am putting off any notes on my adventures in Thailand and Cambodia, and I am doing something I have meant to do for months and months: put out the news about friends with new books. This and upcoming notes on books should not be regarded as reviews but as friendly introductions. Books by Howard Bahr, Philip Lee Williams, Corey Mesler, and a good many more are heaped on the corner of my desk, waiting for further attention.

Book no. 1 will be Booklife (Tachyon, 2009), for the happy reason that my still jet-lagged body must move a mere three feet to claim it. Jeff Vandermeer actually has two new books out, Finch and Booklife. I haven't ordered Finch as yet.

The world is awash in books about how to be a writer, but Booklife is a how-to of considerable interest. It pays a good deal of attention to how to live a healthy and healthy-minded life despite being a writer (there's a trick for many!), how to plan strategically as a writer, how to deal with gifts and not-gifts, how to make a living network of connections that are genuine rather than mere frantic attempts to scratch your own back with somebody else's fingernails, and how to navigate those pleasant little sloughs, rejection and envy and despair. Oh, there's lots more, right down to the nuts and bolts of the internet--twitterage, facebook-playing, blogging, and so on.

Though my next book will be my 8th, I still found much to contemplate in Booklife. I suppose the thing that prodded me the most is Jeff's emphasis on planning the future because I, like many creative souls, tend to be a tumbleweed catching the breeze and rolling until I meet a friendly or (alas!) not-so-friendly fence post. The Vandermeer mode--and it has certainly worked for Jeff as he climbed up from obscurity to the small presses to the mainstream--is to establish long-term goals. He has five-year plans, one-year plans, monthly tasks, and weekly tasks. He even has a mission statement that he revises from time to time. This is a pitch of organization that's way beyond the me of my first eight books. Yet I see much to admire in writing down what one wants to accomplish over a long period and in having a systematic way of examining accomplishments and adjusting goals. The Vandermeer method asks the writer to glance at long-term and short-term goal documents on a daily basis and also revises them quarterly. Such efforts have all the romance of a bank balance sheet, but they appear to be a way of pushing oneself forward--as in the practical, ordinary way that a dieter writes down each meal's calories in order to become aware of whether she is moving toward the desired goal and to increase motivation.

I'm going to try a little planning in the Vandermeer mode right now. I'll try and lay out some one-year goals . . .

• PR Consider what to do in order to get ready for The Throne of Psyche when it comes out in hardcover and softcover in 2011. My last book of poetry (Claire, LSU) did not sell all that well. In this it was no different from almost all poetry books, and at that time I was constrained by a more-than-usual need to be home for my three children. I have greater freedom now. What can I plan to do and set in motion so that The Throne of Psyche can be more successful? Samuel Johnson sold by subscription; what can I do in 2010-11 to bring my book to a contemporary audience?
• POETRY I already have an unsolicited request for a next book of poetry. That's pretty darn good, given the state of poetry publishing. Whether my third book of poems goes to that editor or not, I need to have a well-structured book of poems by next April. The poems are finished, but I need order. And the book must go out in May because I will be very busy in June and July.
• POETRY Who knows how many new poems will come? That depends on the fount and the muse. Send them to poetry magazines that I like--particularly Mezzo Cammin and The Flea--and more general outlets. Think about the recent request for poems about the Asia trip.
• SHORT FICTION Something to mull: I have enough short fiction to fill several wheelbarrows. What to do with these stories already published in magazines and anthologies? Given the state of the story market, what can be done? Collect or ignore?
• SHORT FICTION Fill all reasonable anthology requests and follow the urgings of desire!
• NOVELS I have manuscripts out at several good presses, all from surprise requests. I must say that I love being asked even more than I love being published by a prestigious mainstream publisher. This may be a less-than-stellar attitude, but it feels good to me. I need to place at least one novel in the coming year. And I ought to reread all novel manuscripts on hand.
• NOVELS Do not write a new novel this year!
• CHILDREN'S NOVEL I finished the draft of the novel written for my youngest child before I left for Thailand. Before Christmas I need a fairly high polish on the manuscript so that I can pass it on to my daughter for illustration--this is counter to the way things are usually done, but I'm committed to submitting this manuscript with illustrations. The novel contains a teenage girl who keeps a drawing journal, so the illustrations will be tightly bound to the text. The book needs to be submitted in 2010. It should go to FSG, where the majority of my books have been published, and to other editors who have asked to see my children's books.
• MAJOR EVENTS Right now I'm up for three long events in the coming year--one as-yet-in-the-planning-stages week-long workshop for my own community, one visiting writer gig at the Hollins M. A. program in children's literature, and one stint at "Shared Worlds" at Wofford. Ponder what more is right for 2010, given family commitments and upcoming graduations?
• REVIEWS Am I too busy to do reviews? Re-consider? I probably am, but perhaps it is worthwhile anyway . . .

That wasn't too painful; I'll have to look at it from time to time and see if I can make use of it. (Feel free to add some advice or corrective!) You may find some other aspect of Booklife to be fruitful; I recommend it as a handbook with more heart and wisdom than most.

Cautionary admission: Jeff quotes from me here and there, and there's a tiny essay on luck by me somewhere in the region of the appendix.

Back from Thailand and Cambodia...

Mark this FLEA

The Flea Broadsheets

Flea No. 3 (by Paul Stevens, that imaginative editor) is up--and floating in its tight belly are these:

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Hydrangeas by Mark Allinson
Sonnet by Mary Alexandra Agner
Iconography by Maryann Corbett
Said Yeats’s Bones to Hardy’s Heart... by Ann Drysdale
A Centaur in His Dragon World by Richard Epstein
The Way is Closed by Midge Goldberg
Relationships by Bill Greenwell
Herald by R. Nemo Hill
Footprint by Janet Kenny
In Defence of Hedonism by Janice D. Soderling
Approaching the Autobiographical by J.J. Steinfeld
Fly in Amber by Leo Yankevich
The Great Frost by Marly Youmans
Meteora by Thomas Zimmerman

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Notice that for once I am not the last in an alphabetical list! Don't know why editors don't occasional do things backwards... And yes, that is sometimes the way a Southerner feels in Cooperstown. Round about January or February.

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Next poetry forthcoming on line: "Interregnum," "Scout Ceremony," and "The Bottle Tree" in Mezzo Cammin. "Self-portrait as Dryad, no. 7" and "A Tree for Ezekiel" in qarrtsiluni.

LAST DRINK BIRD HEAD for charity

LAST DRINK BIRD HEAD

A DESCRIPTION PILLAGED FROM JEFF VANDERMEER

What Is Last Drink Bird Head? That’s the catalyst editors Ann and Jeff VanderMeer provided to over 80 writers in creating this unique anthology, with all proceeds going to ProLiteracy.org. All each writer got was an email with "Last Drink Bird Head" in the subject line and the directions "Who or what is Last Drink Bird Head? Under 500 words." The result? Last Drink Bird Head is a blues musician, a performance artist, a type of alcohol, a town in Texas, and even a song sung by Girl Scouts in Antarctica. Famed designer John Coulthart did the interior, which features bobbing bird heads in the corners of the pages, so that the antho is also a flipbook. Scott Eagle provided the distinctive cover art, and Jacob McMurray of Payseur & Schmidt contributed the cover design for the dustjacket.

PILLAGED FROM MY LAST DRINK BIRD HEAD STORY

In this small story, titled "The Four Directions," Last Drink Bird Head is not a person or creature but words on a scrap of paper shoved in a man's hand. Just to keep up with the disorienting surrealism of the book, I'll give you an excerpt--a scrap, if you will--from the middle of the 5-part story:


2. Last

The numberless sands went on.

Those old men had branded me infidel and sent me into the desert. My sweetheart, my mother, and my father had been slaughtered. Yet I trudged on and could not die.

In a good hour I came on the oasis of a shop, sign creaking: a solitary shoe, with LAST carved underneath.

The bandylegged owner laughed when he caught me drinking from a basin on the floor. He brought me a brimming pitcher, and I drank while he washed my feet.

Afterward, the last-maker measured them with his hands—the girth of the ball against the girth between thumb and middle finger, the instep between thumb and little finger. Søren whittled two precious spars of wood into lasts, shaping ‘feather edge’ and toe and heel.

Each day, he flung the shavings into the air, and they sailed away like feathers.

3. Drink

Once at daybreak, Søren gave me the pitcher and sent me to the spring. As always, I drank its bright sweetness and bathed in the pool until the sea sang in my ears.

I slept, cradled by water, and when I woke, saw an angel cutting diagonally away from the fountain. The battered cup was still trembling on its chain.

PRE-PUB DISCOUNT, NO PILLAGING

Ministry of Whimsy, through Wyrm Publishing, has made the Last Drink Bird Head flash fiction anthology available for preorder at a $5 discount. All proceeds go to ProLiteracy, an organization that “champions the power of literacy to improve the lives of adults and their families, communities, and societies. We envision a world in which everyone can read, write, compute, and use technology to lead healthy, productive, and fulfilling lives.”


WRITERS YOU MAY KNOW WHO ARE LAST DRINK BIRD HEADS

Daniel Abraham, Michael Arnzen, Steve Aylett, KJ Bishop, Michael Bishop, Desirina Boskovich, Keith Brooke, Jesse Bullington, Richard Butner, Catherine Cheek, Matthew Cheney, Michael Cisco, Gio Clairval, Alan M. Clark, Brendan Connell, Paul Di Filippo, Stephen R. Donaldson, Rikki Ducornet, Clare Dudman, Hal Duncan, Scott Eagle, Brian Evenson, Eliot Fintushel, Jeffrey Ford, Richard Gehr, Felix Gilman, Jon Courtney Grimwood, Rhys Hughes, Paul Jessup, Antony Johnston, John Kaiine, Henry Kaiser, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Tessa Kum, Ellen Kushner, Jay Lake, Tanith Lee, Stina Leicht, Therese Littleton, Beth Adele Long, Dustin Long, Nick Mamatas, JM McDermott, Sarah Monette, Kari O’Connor, Ben Peek, Holly Phillips, Louis Phillips, Tim Pratt, Cat Rambo, Mark Rich, Bruce Holland Rogers, Nicholas Royle, G Eric Schaller, Ekaterina Sedia, Ramsey Shehadeh, Peter Straub, Victoria Strauss, Michael Swanwick, Mark Swartz, Alan Swirsky, Rachel Swirsky, Sonya Taaffe, Justin Taylor, Steve Rasnic Tem, Jeffrey Thomas, Scott Thomas, John Urbancik, Genevieve Valentine, Kim Westwood, Leslie What, Andrew Steiger White, Conrad Williams, Liz Williams, Neil Williamson, Caleb Wilson, Gene Wolfe, Jonathan Wood, Marly Youmans, and Catherine Zeidler

Direct link to order page:
http://wyrmpublishing.com/catalog/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=20